Rich Brooks is a veteran in the digital marketing realm and the president of flyte New Media. Brooks shares his profound insights on the intersection of neuromarketing and digital strategy, emphasizing the importance of understanding consumer behavior to optimize marketing efforts.

Rich discusses the evolution of his agency and the significant role of neuromarketing in today’s marketing landscape. He delves into the challenges and opportunities presented by emerging technologies like AI and blockchain in marketing. Highlighting his upcoming Agents of Change conference, Rich invites listeners to explore the future of digital marketing through expert-led sessions.

Want to learn more about Rich's work? Check out their website at https://takeflyte.com.

Connect with Rich on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/in/therichbrooks.

Key Points with Timestamps:

• 00:00:30 - Craig introduces the podcast and its focus on impactful leadership.
• 00:01:20 - Introduction of Rich Brooks and his role in digital marketing and entrepreneurship.
• 00:02:25 - Discussion on neuromarketing and its integration into Rich’s agency.
• 00:04:14 - Rich reflects on marketing fundamentals and the constant in consumer behavior.
• 00:05:10 - Insights into the psychological aspects of marketing and consumer decision-making.
• 00:06:53 - Optimal strategies for product choices and consumer satisfaction.
• 00:09:17 - Ethical considerations in marketing and client relationships.
• 00:11:56 - Introduction of blockchain as a new agent of change.
• 00:16:10 - The evolving landscape of SEO and its future implications.
• 00:19:33 - The role of AI in modern business strategies.
• 00:23:59 - Practical applications of AI in enhancing business operations.
• 00:31:55 - Details on the upcoming Agents of Change conference.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;20;24
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Rich Brooks. Rich is the founder and president of Flight New Media, a digital agency in Portland, Maine, and it's been in business for over 26 years. He is a nationally recognized speaker on entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and social media. Rich's also founded the Agents of Change annual conference and weekly podcast that focuses on search, social, and mobile marketing.

00;01;20;27 - 00;01;36;19
Craig Andrews
As a matter of fact, coming up is the 10th annual Agents of Change conference so you can attend it in person or online. But first, let's let's learn a little bit more about it. I just want to welcome Rich. Thank you.

00;01;36;21 - 00;01;38;25
Rich Brooks
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks so much.

00;01;38;27 - 00;02;04;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So, we we met and, you know, so I think it was Atiba D'Souza introduced us. He obviously knows everybody and introduces everybody. And and, and then I found out that, you I forgot what it was. You know, one of my neighbors, Roger Dooley. well.

00;02;04;06 - 00;02;09;18
Rich Brooks
It's not like we're pen pals, but I am very aware of him. I love his podcast and the content that he puts out.

00;02;09;21 - 00;02;25;00
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah, he's a neat guy. Very, very sharp. But you have an interest in. So for those who don't know, Roger is very much in the neuromarketing and, neuroscience and is. And so you kind of share that interest with Roger.

00;02;25;02 - 00;02;47;20
Rich Brooks
Absolutely. Very fascinated by that. In fact, we have the agents of change or literal agents like we created these cartoon characters for originally with search, social and mobile marketing. When we rebranded last year coming out of Covid, we added three more agents and they were neuro short for neuro marketing, blockchain and AI. So we really wanted to.

00;02;47;20 - 00;02;57;07
Rich Brooks
These are the agents of change. When it comes to digital marketing. These are the things that you need to be paying attention to, and we just personified them in comic book culture.

00;02;57;09 - 00;03;05;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So for those that aren't familiar, what what would you define as neuro marketing?

00;03;05;16 - 00;03;24;14
Rich Brooks
So there is probably a dictionary definition that I should have memorized. But basically it's it's really the, scientific psychology side of marketing. So it's really about understanding, what makes people tick and being able to measure those results into meaningful ways for marketing and business.

00;03;24;17 - 00;03;50;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And, you know, I feel like in a lot of ways, it's a it's a grossly underutilized skill. I mean, it's, you know, it should be fully mature by now, but it's surprising the number of people that that don't tap in to some of the key elements of neuro marketing. And it's it's insanely powerful.

00;03;50;25 - 00;04;14;01
Rich Brooks
I would agree, and that was one of the reasons we added it into the mix for the agents of change, because a lot of the other characters are relatively new in the marketing field. Search engine optimization. I mean, yes, it's been around since 95, 96, 97. But, you know, it's it's still relatively new when it comes to marketing, social media, mobile marketing, certainly AI and blockchain.

00;04;14;03 - 00;04;47;29
Rich Brooks
But there's something about marketing that we sometimes lose our connection with, and that's that we're always marketing to people, and people don't change that much. I mean, yes, we've evolved hopefully as a species, but a lot of the things that affect us today and cause us to make decisions that don't always make sense are because they're rooted all the way back to our primitive selves, and so understanding why we make the decisions we do is probably one of the most valuable superpowers that a marketing person or business owner could unlock.

00;04;47;29 - 00;05;10;04
Rich Brooks
And for me, I mean, I was always I thought I was going to become a psychologist, just like my dad. This when I went to college for, ultimately that wasn't my path. But I remember when somebody introduced me to the book, Influenced The Psychology of Persuasion by Doctor Robert Gladney, which is also in that whole world of neuromarketing, one of the earlier books in that arena.

00;05;10;07 - 00;05;29;27
Rich Brooks
I was fascinated that a lot of the things that I was seeing quoted myself, as well as in my clients and other people I knew we were making decisions that made no sense. Until you understand some of what causes us to take psychological shortcuts, to make decisions, because there's just too many decisions every day we're supposed to make.

00;05;29;29 - 00;05;55;27
Rich Brooks
And if you understand those, you can kind of tap into those. And of course, you can manipulate people for for evil, but you can also do a lot of good when you understand these tactics and techniques. So for me, it's like I always assume that people are optimistic people are going to be good. I think understanding this and teaching some of those neuromarketing and psychological techniques can really be the big game changer for a lot of businesses out there.

00;05;55;29 - 00;06;18;14
Craig Andrews
You know, I was at, Lowe's or Home Depot with my wife, and we were we were going to get a new faucet for the kitchen or something like that. And of course, in there you have like this massive wall of faucets. And I'm sitting there watching my wife go into overload. So one of the, you know, as we think about neuromarketing, one problem is having too many choices.

00;06;18;17 - 00;06;37;27
Craig Andrews
The other problem is having too few choices. Yeah. If you only have one choice, you know you're kind of forcing people. If you put out a proposal and only has one option, you're kind of forcing your prospect to go do competitive shopping because they have trouble making decisions in the absence of comparison.

00;06;37;29 - 00;06;53;11
Rich Brooks
Right. And then on the opposite side of the spectrum, which is also what you're saying is if you give them too many choices, they're not going to be able to make a decision. And so the basically take a step back and talk to somebody else otherwise. So there's probably an optimal number. Usually the number is three by default.

00;06;53;11 - 00;07;17;15
Rich Brooks
But it could be anything that is the right number of options to give people. So that it's not saying yes or no. It's saying which of these is right for you. And maybe Home Depot or Lowe's or whomever it was probably needs to implement elements of the book nudge into helping consumers find the right, faucet in this case, for them, without doing too much of a cognitive load.

00;07;17;21 - 00;07;36;12
Rich Brooks
Maybe it's like first time home buyers. These are our favorite three products or do it yourselfers. These are our favorite three products. Never done this before. These are, you know, something along those lines may have helped your wife figure out which was the right faucet for her. And then it would have just been, do I want it in gold, silver, chrome?

00;07;36;15 - 00;07;56;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And so what I end up doing is I think this this is a practical example of using these principles for good. I saw my wife going into overload. And so I just started breaking it down. And I said, okay, between these three faucets, which one do you like most? And I went one. And I was like, okay, we're going to hang onto this one.

00;07;56;29 - 00;08;17;25
Craig Andrews
Between this one and these next, which. And so I just broke it down into manageable choices. And so when we're talking about the ethics of this and I think, you know, I've noticed a lot of people are terrified of being manipulated. Once they understand what we're doing with neuromarketing, they think, oh, you can make me bark like a dog.

00;08;17;26 - 00;08;34;17
Craig Andrews
I'm like, no, only if you want bark like a dog, then I can influence what type of dog you want. Bark like, right? But I can't make you bark like a dog unless you want bark like a dog. But we can use these, these tools ethically to help people make decisions in their lives.

00;08;34;19 - 00;08;54;15
Rich Brooks
Absolutely. Yeah. And some of what you could do is, you know, if you had a client who needs to be able to blog more frequently or create more content, you might create some positive reinforcement for creating that content or breaking down the things that are keeping them from making it, whatever it may be, so that you can encourage the behavior.

00;08;54;17 - 00;09;09;06
Rich Brooks
Because this is something we run into all the time. We have clients who don't want us to create the content for them, but they never seem to get around to it themselves. So leveraging some of these tools, these weapons of influence is, as Robert Shield calls them, can be very beneficial, like it can be used for good.

00;09;09;06 - 00;09;17;04
Rich Brooks
And it just obviously depends on the the person behind the curtain of whether they are doing good or doing evil. I guess.

00;09;17;07 - 00;09;30;29
Craig Andrews
Well. And so for like for you, when you're, when you're bringing on clients and you know that you're going to bring some of these tools to them, how do you decide who to equip with these tools and who not to in terms?

00;09;31;01 - 00;09;39;00
Rich Brooks
well, in terms of like when I'm talking to my clients, what, what tools or or styles might I use for each person? Is that what you're asking?

00;09;39;06 - 00;10;01;02
Craig Andrews
Or it's it's actually more of an ethics question because I think anybody that knows what you know, runs into, you know, runs into ethical questions sometimes. So it's you know, so we we were talking about the song Mack the Knife in the Green Room, and it's a song about Jack the Ripper. If Jack the Ripper showed up, and say, hey, I need some help marketing.

00;10;01;02 - 00;10;09;06
Craig Andrews
I'm just running out. Threats to slit. Oh, it's likely you would. You would say, sorry. You know, we don't serve your kind here.

00;10;09;09 - 00;10;28;15
Rich Brooks
Right? well, when it comes to things like that, I would say, and obviously that's a very extreme case, but, you know, we turned down clients. I turned down clients because I'm usually one doing sales all the time, like if something in fact. So we had a client who, a friend of mine who wanted to refer a gun manufacturer to me.

00;10;28;16 - 00;10;45;20
Rich Brooks
Now, I have no issues, per se, with guns. And I'm not saying to your audience you should be pro-gun or anti-gun, but for me, it just wasn't in alignment with who I am. These were semi-automatic weapons. It didn't really align with it. I'm like, I appreciate the referral, but you probably want to find somebody else. I don't think we do a good job.

00;10;45;23 - 00;11;06;24
Rich Brooks
I've had similar things in different industries or just even as simple as I. Earlier today I had a call with a prospect and they were talking about this, plan, that campaign that they wanted to roll out. And it was definitely within our sweet spot. I knew that we could do it without question, and it wasn't an unethical ask, but it didn't make any sense to me.

00;11;06;27 - 00;11;24;12
Rich Brooks
Like, it just was like I'm saying, but why do it this way when you could probably get more out of if you approached it from this direction and it would feel more transparent, and my belief is that it would be a provide a better result and a more measurable result. And they really had their heart stuck on this original plan that they come up with.

00;11;24;15 - 00;11;46;28
Rich Brooks
Well, if that's the way it goes and we're not going to be the right company for them, it's not unethical. But for me, it's like I have to be in alignment with what you want to accomplish, because that's really the goal of my company is to help you reach your objectives. And if those objectives don't align with mine, even if it's like, not that it's, you know, diametrically opposed, I don't want you spending money with me because my heart's not going to be in it.

00;11;46;28 - 00;11;56;14
Rich Brooks
And I don't think we're going to do the right job. So right off the bat, I need to find clients who there is alignment for us moving forward.

00;11;56;17 - 00;12;14;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now, one of the things, one of the agents of change that you introduced was blockchain, and that none of the other ones surprised me. That one surprised me a little bit. So definitely from a marketing standpoint, what should people be doing about blockchain?

00;12;14;22 - 00;12;37;23
Rich Brooks
you know, that's a great question. And my team pushed back so hard. Maybe they were right, but I absolutely loved the graphic that my designer, Josh, designed for blockchain. So I was kind of sold on it. I will say, even back then when I was trying to defend blockchain, I was like, I'm not sure exactly how this is going to work, but I feel that, you know, and this was when we were coming up with these characters.

00;12;37;23 - 00;12;58;08
Rich Brooks
Web3 was still like a big conversation piece. Virtual reality was still a big conversation piece. And that's a conversation that ebbs and flows. I'm sure it'll come back around again. and crypto was a big thing, and cryptocurrency still is a big thing. I mean, depending on the day of the week, you might be making thousands of dollars or losing thousands of dollars.

00;12;58;10 - 00;13;19;22
Rich Brooks
But the question becomes is, how do you actually use this in your marketing, in your business? I think I actually finally got my first blockchain, interviewee on my podcast the other day, and we talked through, how you can leverage blockchain in your marketing. And a lot of it was things like, it's just a way of building a deeper connection with your clientele.

00;13;19;22 - 00;13;44;00
Rich Brooks
And I did an interview a while ago. It was more on crypto than blockchain. But blockchain is the underlying technology for all this stuff. And this was a company that was rolling out a steak club, like basically a club for steak lovers. You bought in using blockchain to this group. And when you were in there, you were able to track exactly the history of where your beef came from.

00;13;44;00 - 00;14;06;25
Rich Brooks
It all came from this little island off of Japan, all Kobe level beef, all these like things. And if you're a huge carnivore, maybe not physically huge, but definitely that you're really into eating meat. These are the things you care about. And so using blockchain, you could track and trace the entire path. Who, raised the who raised the cattle, who slaughtered the cattle, how it moved from place to place.

00;14;06;27 - 00;14;26;01
Rich Brooks
And for some people, that's a fascinating piece and something worth paying for. So basically, the blockchain was allowing you to confirm that this actually was the piece of beef that started way off this little island and track the entire thing, and that was an added value to these people. So it's almost like a membership pass. And that was one approach.

00;14;26;07 - 00;14;50;16
Rich Brooks
Now we also talked about loyalty cards and things like that, that all could be used in using or leveraging blockchain and the value of selling things. Maybe multiple times using blockchain. If somebody comes to me and says, Rich, how do I use blockchain to grow my business? My first response is maybe let's talk about some other things you need to get, like, how is your website doing?

00;14;50;16 - 00;15;09;29
Rich Brooks
Like blockchain may be really interesting for certain verticals right now, but in my opinion, the biggest problem is just that most people don't really understand what it is or how to leverage it. And so getting people to opt into an extra thing like SMS messaging like that was a really big hurdle to come over, like maybe five, ten years ago.

00;15;10;06 - 00;15;26;29
Rich Brooks
Now it's something we're all used to doing. So there may come a day where blockchain is so integral or so invisible to marketing and business that it that the hurdle has disappeared. But for right now, I probably recommend if somebody is looking to grow their business, that's not going to be the low hanging fruit.

00;15;27;02 - 00;15;28;02
Craig Andrews
You know.

00;15;28;04 - 00;15;39;17
Rich Brooks
But agents of change has always been about what's working today and what should we keep our eye on in the future so that we're we're ready for it. So I'm still okay with using blockchain as one of the agents of change.

00;15;39;20 - 00;16;10;22
Craig Andrews
That's awesome. another one of the agents is SEO. Yes. And, for those that are not watching from the, from the ringside seats, things at Google are just blowing up. I mean, Google's had a rough, patch of time here lately. And so what would you tell business owners, you know, and specific to organic search and specific to the AI overviews, what would you tell?

00;16;10;25 - 00;16;15;05
Craig Andrews
what would you tell business owners they need to pay a group?

00;16;15;08 - 00;16;49;27
Rich Brooks
Yeah, it's a perfectly timed question. Correct. Because in a couple of weeks, I'm supposed to do a presentation on SEO, and I have an SEO presentation that I've been doing an evolution of for 20 years. And I'm at the point now where I feel like I have to throw it away because I feel like more so than any time in the past 27 years, that the future of SEO is so in flux that it's hard for me to say that if you do these things on a checklist, keyword research, putting a keywords in these places on your page, getting some inbound links, that that's all you need to do.

00;16;49;28 - 00;17;10;22
Rich Brooks
Yes, checklists are still helpful and important, but the future of SEO is that it is just part of what's going on. So as we look forward as an agency doing our own SEO, doing SEO for clients, a lot of what we're thinking of is how do we create the most valuable content on the web for our most ideal customer?

00;17;10;24 - 00;17;33;13
Rich Brooks
And we leverage AI to do some of that. So right now, you mentioned this, AI overview, which until recently was called SGP or search, generate a generative experience, which is basically where I ask a question or a query at Google. And Google scrapes the web and puts together an AI generated report for me, looking after the resources.

00;17;33;13 - 00;17;51;14
Rich Brooks
But very often I don't need to go any further. I don't need to visit those sites. So as a site owner, it can be terrifying. We've already reached a tipping point where more than half of the searches done on Google don't lead to a click, meaning that the searcher was satisfied by the results on the Google results page.

00;17;51;20 - 00;18;12;06
Rich Brooks
They don't need to go any deeper if your business model is to get people to your website, which is like 98% of all businesses, then you're pretty nervous right now. Like this is a little bit terrifying that most of the searches that Google is, is, responding to, it's not actually sending out any traffic. It's keeping that traffic for itself.

00;18;12;08 - 00;18;34;17
Rich Brooks
That's definitely problematic. So I think for business owners, the advice I'm kind of coming to right now is you really need to be crystal clear on who your ideal, buyer is. And so for us, for example, like, we know that our businesses, our best clients come from a certain size business, and they're either the owner or director of marketing with an ear for the owner.

00;18;34;17 - 00;18;57;01
Rich Brooks
And they can make their own decisions, and they have a budget of a certain size. So with that in mind, as we write new content or rehab old content on our website, both service pages and blog posts, we're always like, what does a director of marketing or what does an owner need to know in this article? And how do we make this the most valuable article they possibly could find based on this?

00;18;57;03 - 00;19;12;21
Rich Brooks
That will be rewarded from Google with traffic. But even so, we have to recognize that it won't be as much traffic as it has been in the past that the search volume for almost all of the clients that we're seeing in almost all the businesses we're seeing is going down, and I don't see that it's going to rebound.

00;19;12;24 - 00;19;33;12
Rich Brooks
So I do recommend that people diversify. And I even I, who's a little bit over social media at this point, have started to circle back around and think about how can I leverage organic social to drive more traffic to my website or to just build relationships that will ultimately lead to traffic, but right. For your ideal customer, use AI tools.

00;19;33;12 - 00;19;57;09
Rich Brooks
For some keyword research. And also, one of my favorite things to use AI for right now is like I recently wrote an article on email KPIs. What should you be paying attention to with email? Marketing is an important part of your marketing. And by the way, it's everybody's critical piece. And it and ChatGPT gave me an outline to write on and yes, I could have used ChatGPT to write the article.

00;19;57;12 - 00;20;17;03
Rich Brooks
that's not where I am. I like writing my own stuff, but I do like asking it for a framework because there's always something that I wouldn't have included. And when I see it listed by ChatGPT, I can say like, oh, you know what? That's actually a really good section and I should talk about that right there. And so that's why we're not good as humans to see what we're missing.

00;20;17;05 - 00;20;36;23
Rich Brooks
But ChatGPT is good at making sure that we get a complete picture. And I use ChatGPT as a umbrella term. It could be Claude, could be Gemini, it could be whatever. But that piece will help you write a better, more valuable article for your ideal customer. And that is probably the future of SEO.

00;20;36;26 - 00;21;03;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And that actually leads into something else, you know? So the, people are talking a lot about AI, and they're trying to figure out what they should be doing, and there's a general sense that they should be doing more AI. And in some ways, it feels like the, you know, the teenage sex thing, everybody, you know, all the teenagers saying they have sex, less of them are doing it than really are none of them are doing it.

00;21;03;19 - 00;21;13;12
Craig Andrews
Well, in some ways, I feels like that. So what would be your advice to, to businesses in terms of the role of AI in their business?

00;21;13;15 - 00;21;31;21
Rich Brooks
if you're interested in AI and you're in a position of leadership, I think you can, depending on the size of your business, I think you can start to implement things on your own for me, because it's my company and I get to decide direction. I recognize AI as being more important than social media was when it first came on the scene.

00;21;31;23 - 00;21;49;29
Rich Brooks
More important, I would argue, than the internet is, and I run a digital agency, like that's how important I think AI is going to be going forward. You know, up and down in waves like every other new technology. But the bottom line is, like, I feel that this is, the most important thing that we can be paying attention to right now as business leaders.

00;21;50;02 - 00;22;17;06
Rich Brooks
I would, depending on this, your interest in this and the size of your company, either start this yourself or maybe start a group of people who are interested in integrating AI, to understand how you can use these tools. And there's certainly resources out there for sure. And there's conferences. I went to Makan last year in Cleveland. I'm going again, the marketing AI conference, because I think conferences are valuable resources for learning about new technologies and new ideas.

00;22;17;08 - 00;22;44;13
Rich Brooks
but right now, I'm in the phase of my journey because I would not describe myself as an expert. Even though I think about AI constantly. I'm in the leg of my journey where it's like, how do I implement AI into my workflow? So I've been playing around with different AI tools and different things, but it's like literally if I'm going to create an SOP for how Flight New Media does a blog post or how we do measurement marketing, or how we do X, Y, and Z, where does I come into that workflow?

00;22;44;13 - 00;23;02;01
Rich Brooks
And a lot of it for me right now is experimentation. So we're doing a project right now to help a client improve the UX of their website. And one of the things that we decided to do as part of this project is to do a deep dive into their users. We're interviewing their users. We're collecting the data through zoom in fathom.

00;23;02;04 - 00;23;40;04
Rich Brooks
Now we've got transcripts, and we're feeding it into AI to get another perspective. It's not that I couldn't read through those 30 or so interviews and start to pull some pieces out of them, but man, is that time consuming. And I don't know that I find it all right. I my eyes would start blurring over, but we use ChatGPT to start finding trends and best quotes that really, accentuate a certain point that we're going after so that when we turn to actually do the work of how do we improve the usability of the website, we have this great wall of data that's been kind of parsed by AI to help us make better decisions.

00;23;40;11 - 00;23;59;02
Rich Brooks
So that's like some of the ways that I'm experimenting and using AI. and I'm finding that in some cases it falls flat on a face. I won't I won't pretend that it doesn't. But other times you get a new perspective. you get somebody who's really good with data and can find, patterns that you might not see otherwise.

00;23;59;04 - 00;24;17;23
Rich Brooks
So there's a lot of different ways, and I think it's up to owners and leaders to start experimenting with these tools or find people on their team to experiment with these tools and implement it into the daily workflow, because that's how it's going to become a real productivity tool.

00;24;17;26 - 00;24;44;15
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and one of the things that you says you have, I generate the outline, but you do the writing and and that really resonated with me from a couple angles. one, yeah, I heard somebody describe this, you know, over a year ago, they said that, chat rates at basically a B minus level. So if you're a C or D writer, it will bring you up to a B minus writer.

00;24;44;18 - 00;24;54;02
Craig Andrews
If you're a B plus writer, it'll bring you down to B minus writer and if you're an AA writer, you're probably not using chat. You're probably writing it yourself.

00;24;54;04 - 00;25;31;04
Rich Brooks
And I think that's a I've seen research that shows that the people who benefit most from AI are around specific tasks that they're not experienced at, or not very good at. So I think that's where you see the benefit. But even moving beyond that, I do think that there are ways of leveraging AI like, hey, you know, ChatGPT, can you give me an outline for this article that I'm considering writing, especially if I tell you who I'm writing it for and what the outcome I'm looking for is, and or when I finish writing my article, feeding it back into ChatGPT and asking it for improvements on the article I just wrote, it might make it.

00;25;31;04 - 00;25;44;28
Rich Brooks
Now I do this and more often than not I'm like, yeah, I know I don't agree with you, but you know, the bottom line is for a lot of people, that's going to be a huge impact on the quality and clarity of their writing. Just asking ChatGPT to look over at one time.

00;25;45;00 - 00;25;47;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00;25;48;01 - 00;25;56;03
Rich Brooks
The even in a writer might miss something that that B minus copy editor would find. So I mean it's okay to get a second opinion.

00;25;56;06 - 00;26;13;16
Craig Andrews
Oh my goodness I've, I've got a presentation I've been using for five six years. And like two weeks ago I was going through it. I was like, Holy crap, there's a typo. I've been presenting this for years with a typo. I'm sure I would have found.

00;26;13;18 - 00;26;15;02
Rich Brooks
Oh, sure.

00;26;15;04 - 00;26;23;05
Craig Andrews
Now, what do you think about AI taking the role of customer service?

00;26;23;07 - 00;26;42;20
Rich Brooks
well, that's an interesting question. I hadn't given it much thought, but I have read a number of articles. How I actually it's better bedside manners and doctors do. that's the way that they. Yeah. Well, they lay that and this could be because doctors are being forced by insurance companies to churn through clients or, patients as quickly as possible.

00;26;42;22 - 00;27;04;14
Rich Brooks
I don't want to go down whose fault is or anything like that, but I could see that there would be a real benefit to using AI for customer service with certain safeguards. I mean, for example, being able to provide a small business, being able to provide customer service in a 24 seven way would be very powerful to that small business and its customers.

00;27;04;16 - 00;27;27;00
Rich Brooks
and I also think that, you know, we've probably all been guilty. God knows I have of really getting upset with the customer service rep on the other side of the phone, even though it's not his or her fault, and chatbot or whatever it would be. Probably he's not going to take those attacks personally and would just be able to continue helping the person, no matter how verbally abusive they were on the phone.

00;27;27;02 - 00;27;46;28
Rich Brooks
So I think that there are some benefits there, and I bet you that I could take care of 75 to 80% of the typical customer service complaints on its own, and then elevate it to more highly trained customer service reps when that fails, or when it's a new situation that maybe the AI doesn't know how to handle it.

00;27;46;28 - 00;28;12;08
Rich Brooks
So I don't necessarily have a reason. I mean, whenever you talk about AI taking over a job, you raise the specter of job loss, which is a legitimate concern. but I tend to think that it's not just AI that causes job loss. Every technology causes job loss, but it also causes, on the other end, job creation. And those jobs are often more higher paid, safer jobs and the jobs that they replace.

00;28;12;08 - 00;28;26;27
Rich Brooks
So so I guess I'm for customer service done by AI, but I guess I'd want to see how it actually plays out before I said yes, it's ready to go or perhaps it needs a few more years in the training centers.

00;28;27;00 - 00;28;52;28
Craig Andrews
Yeah, interesting. So, broadly, broadly, what would be. Yeah. So thinking about your your agents of change, what would be two, 1 or 2 pieces of advice that you would give business owners that they should be taking, actions they should be taking in 2024.

00;28;53;00 - 00;29;20;14
Rich Brooks
So we've kind of talked about the AI thing to death. So I could have talked and said, that's the most important thing that you should focus on, because it is so of the moment. And I and I still believe that. But outside of really making AI such a focus for your business, the other thing that I would say to any owner, because I have these conversations, you know, I'm in an agency masterminds and I have peer groups is understanding where you add value to your organization.

00;29;20;17 - 00;29;46;00
Rich Brooks
And really, where do you find joy in your job, in your career and focus everything on those areas and grow those areas of what you do and find the things that you're not as good at or are repetitive or I don't like the phrasing of this, but are beneath you. Perhaps they're more entry level, but you just been in the habit of doing it and automate or delegate or outsource those things.

00;29;46;00 - 00;30;11;08
Rich Brooks
I mean, I know this is not new what I'm saying, but this is something that I see almost every business owner struggle with throughout their career, that they become the bottleneck, that they feel that they're the best ones to do this, that they don't want to see their company fail by letting a younger person or a less experienced person do the sales, or do the proposal, or do the customer service or whatever it may be.

00;30;11;11 - 00;30;38;17
Rich Brooks
But the only way that we grow as businesses, and that could be in terms of revenue or success or size, is by growing our team. And I think that when we try and control everything, we don't actually give our team the space to grow. And I guess after 27 years of being in business really started around year 25, I felt my role at the company evolve and change.

00;30;38;17 - 00;31;07;29
Rich Brooks
Like when I first started, I was doing web design and then when we realized I was a terrible designer and the tools got better, I was a developer. And then when I got bored of development and I realized, like, I wasn't the best one at it, I moved on to marketing and and I just continue to evolve. And now I would say my role is really to bring up and encourage the people on my team to be the best at what they can do, and it's an incredibly rewarding area, and that's one of the key areas that brings me joy and gets me excited about my job and where I'm focusing my attention.

00;31;08;01 - 00;31;30;07
Rich Brooks
And I think because of that, the company is growing and the employees within the company are growing too. And we have great, what's the word? I'm looking for a retention when it comes to employees. I have some employees who've been with me for over 20 years at this point, and I have some younger ones who obviously haven't been here nearly as long, but they feel very satisfied in their roles.

00;31;30;09 - 00;31;49;12
Rich Brooks
And we basically mapped out their employee growth map, and we're giving them the autonomy to make mistakes and to learn and to grow from it. And right now, it feels like it's almost like this experiment that we're running, but it feels really good and very rewarding to see the growth in the people that I come to work with every day.

00;31;49;15 - 00;31;55;08
Craig Andrews
That's awesome. So you have your Agents of Change conference coming up. When is that?

00;31;55;11 - 00;32;12;17
Rich Brooks
So that's going to be October 9th and October 10th in Portland, Maine. But as we always do, we have a live stream. You know, because I understand not everybody can get to Portland. You should come. This is a great excuse to come to Portland, Maine. You know, you want to one of the best places in the world. But if you absolutely can't make it, I understand travel can be expensive.

00;32;12;21 - 00;32;30;10
Rich Brooks
We do a, we do a virtual pass. You can watch the mainstage live as it happens, and then you get all 15 sessions recorded on demand, in the days that follow the conference as well. So great resource if you can't make it, but honestly, come to Portland, Maine, spend the day with us on October 9th 15.

00;32;30;10 - 00;32;51;25
Rich Brooks
Amazing digital marketing experts speaking on a wide variety of topics and then we actually have an optional day two, which is our deep dive workshops where these half day, hands on small classroom workshops where you can really work through things like LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, creating, short form video, and some of the other topics that we'll be covering during those two days.

00;32;51;28 - 00;32;55;12
Craig Andrews
Well that's awesome. And how do people reach you.

00;32;55;15 - 00;33;18;17
Rich Brooks
If they want to reach me directly? they probably the easiest thing is, go to LinkedIn. I am the Rich Brooks on LinkedIn. I'm the Rich Brooks on every platform. But LinkedIn is one that I spend the most time on, or at least pay the most attention to. if they like podcasts. And why wouldn't they? They should check out the Agents of Change podcast, which is available on, I'm sure, all the same platforms that your podcast is available on.

00;33;18;20 - 00;33;22;28
Craig Andrews
Oh, awesome. Well, Rich, thanks for coming on Leaders and Legacies today.

00;33;23;00 - 00;33;27;06
Rich Brooks
I loved it. Thanks so much. Great conversation.

00;33;27;06 - 00;33;56;02
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;33;56;04 - 00;34;19;16
Craig Andrews
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00;34;19;18 - 00;36;30;02
Craig Andrews
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